Rethinking Education: learning from the extremes

18 November

ECNAIS, Warsaw

Chris Sigaloff

                             

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehDAP1OQ9Zw&feature=play

er_embeddedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehDAP1OQ9Zw

                             

• Learning is a collaborative activity• School as a support system• Public private partnership• Stimulating entrepreneurship• Focus on creating vs. consuming• Focus on learning vs. teaching• Teachers as learning facilitators assisted by

others• Connection tot real world questions• Problem based instruction• Peer to peer learning

                             

Are our schools Future Proof?

                             

Challenges:

                             

If you do what you did

you get what you got….

                             

Why it is difficult to renew our schools?

• Big conservative powers

• Stakes very high

• Focus on national curriculum and testing

• Limit to teacher-focused improvement strategies

• Top down way of innovation

                             

•  

                              Learning from Extremes?

                             

Social Entrepreneurs

Social entrepreneurs have always provided novel approaches that state systems have learned from. Social entrepreneurs often identify new needs, tools, and organizational models long before the state. That is why even in the developed world, education systems should learn from the transformational innovation being pioneered by social entrepreneurs working at the bottom of the pyramid.

                             

The Hole in the Wall project

                             

Community believes that learning stations are beneficial

                             

Academic performance of the children improves

•

                             

Across the nation, children with access to Learning Station show improved academic

scores

                             

Khan Academyhttp://www.khanacademy.org/video/khan-academy-on-the-gates-notes?playlist=Khan+Academy-Related+Talks+and+Interviews

                             

Barefoot College

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/01/24/barefoot.college.india/index.html

                             

Take away learnings

• Sustainable innovation• Room for ethics, values• Bottum up innovation• Social learning• Practice and theory• Pull not Push• Learning through• Learning as problem solving• Many places for learning• Learning without teachers• Learning from peers• Learning as production• Old and new technology

                             

What is the role for the Independent Schools?

• Continue to be social entrepreneurs

• Posing the fundamental questions

• Being the extreme

• Showing what is possible

• Embracing the future